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Testing & CI

Automated tests cover the UI-independent logic — everything except the WPF view layer. They run locally and gate every CI build, and a coverage report + badge are produced on every push.

Test projects

tests/InstrumentControl.Core.Tests/          # xUnit, net10.0-windows — Core library
tests/InstrumentControl.Instruments.Tests/   # xUnit, net10.0-windows — all 7 instrument plugins

Both are part of InstrumentControl.sln.

InstrumentControl.Core.Tests

References only InstrumentControl.Core.

Area What it covers
SequenceEngineTests Engine state machine: empty sequence, Start→End run, Stop cancellation, Pause/Resume
LoopBlockTests Fixed iteration count + counter, infinite loop stopped by cancellation, pause gate
BuiltInBlocksTests Start/End/EndLoop/Wait/LogMessage/SetVariable/Condition/AddToChart/SaveCsv execution and routing
MathBlockTests The recursive-descent math evaluator: operators, precedence, functions, constants, variables, error paths
DataManagerTests Thread-safe storage, CSV export (header/append/escaping), series and parameter queries
SimulatedConnectionProviderTests Simulated transport for DMM, power supply, oscilloscope and chamber commands
VisaServiceTests Simulation-mode resource discovery and session creation (no NI-VISA needed)
PluginLoaderTests Reflection-based driver discovery, CreateDriver, metadata
ModelsTests / SequenceBlockBaseTests / BlockRegistryTests Models, serialization/clone, the block registry
InstrumentDriverBaseTests / InstrumentDriverBaseExtraTests *IDN? parsing, connect/disconnect/reconnect, reset, query helpers

InstrumentControl.Instruments.Tests

References InstrumentControl.Core and all seven plugin projects. It verifies the exact SCPI strings each driver generates, using a recording fake connection (RecordingConnection) that captures every written command and returns canned query responses.

Area What it covers
HP34401ADriverTests / Keithley2000DriverTests DMM CONF/SENS/READ?, config cache, MATH, limit test, burst, display
ItechIT6922BDriverTests Power-supply set/measure, OVP/OCP, operating-mode decoding
RTB2004DriverTests / RigolDS1000ZDriverTests Scope channel/timebase/trigger/acquire, measurements, waveform parsing, IEEE binary block, source normalization
Agilent34970ADriverTests / Agilent34970ACardsTests Card detection, mixed scans, DAC/DIO/totalizer, and the 34901A/34907A card model
CTSChamberDriverTests Chamber protocol over the simulation fast-path (temperature, ramps, start/stop, state)
InstrumentBlocksTests Metadata of every plugin block + execution of every sequence block against a connected driver

Running the tests

# Everything
dotnet test

# A single project
dotnet test tests/InstrumentControl.Core.Tests

All tests are expected to pass with no failures and no skips.

Coverage

Coverage is collected with coverlet and rendered with ReportGenerator.

  • Configuration lives in coverlet.runsettings: it includes the eight product assemblies (Core + 7 plugins) and excludes the WPF view layer (*/Views/, *.xaml.cs, LiveDataWindow) plus auto-property accessors, so the metric reflects testable logic only.
  • ReportGenerator is pinned as a local tool in .config/dotnet-tools.json.

Generate an HTML report locally:

dotnet tool restore
dotnet test tests/InstrumentControl.Core.Tests        --settings coverlet.runsettings --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage" --results-directory TestResults/core
dotnet test tests/InstrumentControl.Instruments.Tests --settings coverlet.runsettings --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage" --results-directory TestResults/instruments
dotnet reportgenerator -reports:"TestResults/**/coverage.cobertura.xml" -targetdir:coveragereport -reporttypes:"Html;TextSummary"
# open coveragereport/index.html

Use separate result directories

Run each test project into its own --results-directory. Pointing both runs at the same directory can intermittently produce one empty Cobertura file, silently dropping that project's coverage. ReportGenerator then merges TestResults/**/coverage.cobertura.xml.

Continuous integration

Two workflows run on every push and pull request to main:

release.yml

The test step runs before build and publish:

- name: Run tests
  run: dotnet test tests/InstrumentControl.Core.Tests --nologo -v q

If a test fails, no artifact, Velopack package, or GitHub Release is produced — a green test run is a hard prerequisite for a release.

coverage.yml

Runs both test projects on windows-latest, merges coverage, posts a Markdown summary to the run, and uploads the full HTML report as an artifact. On pushes to main it publishes the report and the coverage badge to the dedicated badges branch using the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN (no external service or secret required). The badge in the project README points at the raw SVG on that branch.

Writing new tests

  • Keep tests free of WPF/dispatcher dependencies. Logic that needs the UI thread belongs in the App project and is not unit-tested here.
  • For driver/connection behavior use RecordingConnection (instruments tests) or a lightweight IConnectionProvider such as FakeConnection (Core tests); the SimulatedConnectionProvider in VisaService covers higher-level scenarios. Never touch real VISA in a test.
  • The CTS driver opens a real COM port unless the connection reports ConnectionType == "SIMULATION" — set that on the fake connection to exercise the simulation fast-path.
  • Async tests should be async Task and await the operation rather than blocking (xUnit flags blocking waits).
  • Block classes self-register in a static constructor, so referencing the type once (e.g. _ = new LoopBlock();) ensures BlockRegistry knows about it.
  • Numeric SCPI arguments are formatted with InvariantCulture, so 1e-3 serializes as 0.001 (not 1E-03).